Adding pictures to your database in four easy steps:

 

1) Download and Install Rea Converter;

2) Find a good looking picture;

3) Convert it to the right format;

4) Modifiy the database accordingly.

 

1) Download and Instal Rea Converter;

ReaConverter is a shareware tool that will help you to convert easily your picture sin the correct format.

More informations can be found on the dedicated site ReaConverter Pro v3.5  (http://www.reasoft.com/products/reaconverter/)

Since it's a shareware, u'll have to pay to utilize it fully but u can also use it for free, u'll just won't be allowed to convert more than five pictures in a row.

Dowload the tool http://www.reasoft.com/downloads/ReaConverterPro.exe and install it.

I recommend u to restart your PC now, it's certainly a matter of personnal usage but it can't hurt you.

 

2) Find a good looking picture;

Now, it's the most time consuming part of the work.

There's many sites where u can found good looking military pictures but, generally, i found wich i used on globalsecurity.org, naval-technology.com and airforce-technology.com.

Try to find rectangular pictures with a 2:1 width/height ratio, it will look better when converted.

When u found the picture u wanted, download it somewhere where u will refind it easily.

 

3) Convert it to the right format;

Open ReaConverter, just follow the steps indicated on the labels.

Select file is self explainatory enough. Just select the folder, drag and drop the desired file in the right column.

Click on "Add action to Script" on the bottom.

Now , step 2, we have to specify wich actions we wants to apply on our beloved picture.

In the drop down list, select first "Color Resolution", click just front of "256 colors" and select "Use Dithering" on the bottom too.

Click on "Add action to Script" on the bottom.

Come back in the drop down list and select now "Resize".

Check the box just front of "Pixels" and "Use bothe height and width" too.

Type "160" for Height and "320" for Width.

Click on "Add action to Script" on the bottom.

Step3 - "Specify Save Parameters"

Save it directly in your "[Harpoon folder]\commondb\rsr" folder, save it as "BMP".

Click on Start

Close the tool

Go to ur "[Harpoon folder]\commondb\rsr" and find your brand new bmp picture.

Check the  the number of the last "res***.bmp" file, "res395.bmp" for me and rename ur new picture to make it appear on the last position.

For me, it have to rename it "res396.bmp"

Note this number somewhere, because u'll need it soon.

 

4) Modifiy the database accordingly

Open the PE, find the platform u modified the picture for and fill the "PicId" field with the number contained in the filename -154.

Exemple: "res396.bmp", 396-154=242. So i just to type "242".

Now, export the modified database, close it, launch the SE, create a scen with our new pictures and enjoy!

 

Thanks to Anthony L. Eischens who provided these infos several time on several sites.

 

 

Hope it helps,

Jan

Nice run-thru Jan! Also note that the game likes 16-color images best, but will tolerate 256-color unless they get too big. Any image editor with the features you need (cropping, resize, color depth change) will work. And last but not least, you may want to obtain the permission of copyright holder of the images you are using.

Thanks Tony.

I've talked about ReaConveretr because i found it very easy and reliable, i tried some others tools but their wasn't as good.

One more comment on this (at present anyway). Turn off Animations (Settings menu, Game Options) if you play with a modified commondb.rsr file (i.e. edited images). The image editing procedure listed in this thread happens to work but by doing this we are leaving the commondb.rsr file without some information that the game expects in order to show the animations correctly. Thankfully if the animations are turned off, we get what we want.